The Two Brides
by Diana Prallon
Summary: "You envy her, because she knows him so well." A short piece about Amy finding out about Donna story.


You see her on television, those shows you never minded much because you hoped for more than just _human_. She catches your eye quickly: another red-haired, speaking loudly as you do, with a newborn baby on her pram, and yet a certain sadness in her eyes that simply doesn't match it.

But you do know that sad look, for you had tons of it while Rory was gone. Something you lost and can't really miss, because you wouldn't remember. And just like that, you realize that this Donna Noble used to be in your place. A lost companion missing the stars and the magic so much without knowing what they are.

But your raggedy Doctor never talks about life before you. _He_ had no life before you. He was born and crashed your yard, and doesn't like thinking about _before_. He talks and acts like you've known him all his life – but you've only known him all _your_ life. Not quite the same thing, is it, Amy?

For you really know very little about him, as the Dream Lord reminded you. His words kept on echoing in your brain, through space and time, again and again. You were just a little girl, who couldn't really understand.

He sees her too, and his face drops a little, this looks he gets sometimes. So sad, and yet so happy. It's easy for you to see he longs for this woman, and you wonder if she's another River, another lost love (it always gets down to this, to you, but it's okay. You're only a girl, Amy, just a girl). Not like that, he says, and his eyes are so old and so intense there are no humanly words for it.

For once he tells you the truth – not many details, just babbling about the wonderful Donna Noble, and the Doctor-Donna, and how she's never forgotten, but can't ever remember. How she knows him, so deeply, every single moment of his life; and yet she can't know anything about him, or she would burn.

You envy her, because she knows him so well. You don't waste your time pitying her, you understand her pain better than she does, but you won it all in the end. You don't really know how it is to lose it all. You're just a child, Amy, dreaming about the wonderful Doctor in his magic blue box; not knowing who he really is. You aspire her knowledge, her intimacy. You think you'd rather die knowing him than allowing him to vanish from your mind again

(He didn't tell you about how she cried, and begged him not to, how she held him screaming that she didn't want to go back, that she'd be there all her life, the Doctor-Donna, in the TARDIS. He can't bear to remember that moment, the pain of it was worse than losing the Master again. You also know nothing about the Master, or about how lonely it really is being alone in the universe, the last of his kind. You're still just a kid to him; he'd never show you that completely.)

So the first chance you get, you arrange to meet this woman, everything you wanted to be but can never be. She's kind to you, for she's a kind person. "Poor you", she says, without really knowing why. "Poor _you_", you think, without really understanding fully the tragedy and the magnificence of Donna Noble.

She allows you to pick her baby up, and it gives you a knowing look. The child of a woman with a Time Lord brain locked and hidden, is in itself a child of time. You're scared of it, of course, you don't know much about the Children of Time, those who came before you, and everything they shared. You know little about Donna and Sarah Jane; you know nothing of soldier Martha, even if she knows all about you. You know nothing about Captain Jack (and the Doctor thanks god for it, the universe couldn't deal with both of you at the same time), or about Peri. Not about Mickey Smith, or Barbara and Ian. Nothing about dear Susan, or brave Jenny, the whole family lost again and again. He wouldn't breath a word to you about Rose Tyler and the Bad Wolf, that could control the whole universe, and that burned herself into both his hearts; giving him death and birth at the same time; that Rose who has her own Doctor, to love and to hold, in her parallel universe (oh, how much would you envy her? How much would she understand you?).

You say goodbye to Donna, running back to the Doctor, running back to your safe little world, still in your wedding dress. A running bride in white, hiding from the world in the TARDIS, as Donna was once, so long ago.

(She will dream of you, and of those golden days, she dreams of the stars and the blue box, as you did when you forgot. She'll cry at night, not knowing why, but you can't feel that Amy. You're not shaped for this world of loss and pain, for the failure, you were shaped for a glorious world of travelling with the Doctor. He owned Donna at least that, a life of happiness, to a runaway bride).


End file.
